If we deny ourselves in anything, that our hearts stand strongly for, because it hinders us in holy courses, God will be sure to recompense us in spiritual things abundantly, yea, and in temporal things many times.

And many were the prophets and spiritual guides, yea, countless were they: they sprang from the dust and to dust they returned.

The Turks became such powerful political brokers in late 16th-century Europe that the French humanist Michel de Montaigne concluded that ‘the mightiest, yea the best settled estate that is now in the world is that of the Turkes’.